Oddly enough, James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, makes no mention of any court or basket measurements in his 13 original rules for the game. That may be because Naismith was focused on the concept of play and not dimensions, which were bound to vary from gym to gym. The basket’s height was basically a factor of where the first peach baskets could be attached to an overhead running track, which happened to be 10 feet off the floor.
That height has served the sport very well, even as the players have gotten taller. At times, however, people (including UCLA’s legendary coach John Wooden) have suggested raising the basket to neutralize the potential dominance of big men. The NBA even played one game in 1954 – a regular-season game, to boot – with 12-foot baskets. The NCAA’s strategy was to outlaw dunking from 1967 to 1976, a rule that grew out of concerns that 7. ft. 2 in. Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdu-Jabbar) would be unstoppable at UCLA if he could dunk. He developed the Sky Hook and UCLA remained virtually unbeatable.
Surprisingly, Geno Auriemma, the coach of the University of Connecticut’s championship women’s team, has suggested lowering the basket for women by seven inches, actually 7.2 inches to honor Title IX – this based on average height differences of the players in men’s and women’s basketball. Auriemma says that a lower basket would allow women to make more layups and tip-ins, and cites volleyball as a sport that uses different net heights for men’s and women’s games. But having adjustable baskets could be prohibitively expensive, as well as unnecessary. Women, after all, are getting taller and more skilled all the time.
As for the men’s game, 10-foot-high baskets have not led to dunkathons even in the NBA, where virtually every player is capable of dunking. The reasons are simple: playing against equally tall players makes dunking difficult, and gaining position close enough to the basketball to dunk is not easy. Plus, dunking requires skill. Just think of the risks involved in slamming a ball down through an unforgiving metal hoop.
When it comes to regular shots, the basket height has worked well. After all, no matter how tall the players, they still are going to arc their shots for two reasons: 1) so shots don’t get blocked; and 2) because an arched shot has a better chance of success than one with no arch.
